Does It Hurt to Have Sciatica?
Key takeaways:
Sciatica can indeed be painful.
It typically involves pain that radiates along the path of the sciatic nerve, which runs from the lower back through the hips and buttocks and down the legs.
The pain can vary widely, from a mild ache to a sharp, burning sensation or an excruciating discomfort. Some people also experience numbness, tingling, or muscle weakness in the affected leg or foot. The intensity and type of pain can differ from person to person.
Countless people have experienced back pain, but there are many types. Sciatica pain occurs when the sciatic nerve is irritated or compressed. The sciatic nerve — more exactly, a bundle of five spinal nerves — is the body’s largest and thickest, stretching from the top of the buttocks and down each leg.
When something causes compression or irritation of the sciatic nerve — such as arthritis, a herniated disc, injury, pregnancy, or tissue inflammation — it can be uncomfortable. For many people, it’s temporary and can get better with self-care treatments, stretches, and time. Some prescriptions also help.
GoodRx talked to three people with serious sciatica conditions about how it felt for them and what they did to treat it.
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Cutting pain disappeared after minimally invasive surgery
An avid outdoorsman, Dan Carusi is perpetually in motion: climbing mountains, riding horses, paddling canoes. When he began having pain in his lower back accented by the occasional muscle spasm, he didn’t think much of it. But he still wanted to have it examined.
An X-ray and an MRI revealed Carusi had a mild herniated disc. His doctor recommended steroid shots, physical therapy, and over-the-counter pain relievers. “And it was livable, but with discomfort,” says Dan, 57, a business consultant in Virginia.
As a lifelong athlete, “you learn to live with pain,” Dan says. “It was my new norm.”
So that’s what he did. For 10 years.
Then his pain exploded.
“It flared up to a level of pain I’d never experienced and got progressively worse. It was like someone constantly sticking a knife into my left buttock that radiated down my left leg. I had intense muscle spasms in my lower back,” he says. “I can’t describe it. On a scale of 1 to 10, it was a 12.”
What had started as a mild herniated disc had progressed. The ruptured disc now compressed Dan’s sciatic nerve. A decade of favoring the left side had also weakened it. Soon, “I couldn’t do anything,” Dan says. “I couldn’t move at all. It impacted me mentally and emotionally. I was depressed because of the level of pain and the inability to function in life.”
For most people with herniated discs — up to 90% — the problem improves on its own or with minimal medical treatment, usually within a few months.
“Mine never retreated,” Dan says. “Something made it go further out, make a downward turn, then twist around the nerve.”
When he was first diagnosed with a herniated disc, he wanted to avoid surgery. In 2017, he had a minimally invasive procedure called a microdiscectomy. It involves a surgeon removing the herniated disc or part of the disc, along with any fragments putting pressure on the nerve.
Immediately after the surgery, the sharp pain that had plagued Dan for years was gone. He was also about an inch shorter — now standing 5-feet-11 — with the removal of more than an inch of disc.
Recovery, including physical therapy, took about a year. Dan was climbing again 11 weeks after surgery, tackling Seneca Rocks, West Virginia. Four months postsurgery, he and his son tackled Grand Teton, summiting almost 14,000 feet.
During a hike 2 years later, Dan noticed that he was taking his first step up a mountain with his left foot. It was the first time he’d done that in 14 years, having trained his brain to not lead with that leg.
“There is help for people [with these conditions],” Dan says. “You just have to be your own advocate. Don’t accept the new norm. Find a treatment that’s best for you.”
Sciatica forced a doctor to listen to her body
When Rita Roy, MD, woke one Monday morning with unexpected pain in her right leg, she thought she’d pulled a hamstring. It had been a busy weekend — shuttling her three kids to dance and soccer — and maybe, somehow, she’d injured her leg along the way.
“I thought I’d ripped my hamstring off the bone,” says Rita, 56, the CEO of the National Spine Health Foundation, a nonprofit focused on improving spinal healthcare through education, research, and advocacy.
When over-the-counter pain relievers didn’t help, Rita saw a doctor. X-rays revealed the real root of the problem. “The orthopedic surgeon said, ‘This [pain] isn’t coming from your leg. It’s coming from your back,’” Rita says.
The physician then showed her the X-rays: There was no disc between two of her vertebrae. Another disc had shifted and was crushing her nerve.
“I’m a doctor, but you didn’t need to be a medical person to look at my X-ray and see [the problem],” she says. Doctors theorized that Rita had injured herself decades earlier and the condition of her back “had been a ticking time bomb ever since.”
Spinal fusion could repair the problem, but Rita’s doctors wanted her to wait before having surgery. “The feeling was, ‘See if you can push off this pain as long as you can. If it flares up again, that’s when you know you know you have to have surgery. It’s not if, it’s when.’”
Rita didn’t want to have surgery, fearing it would cause another problem that would need another surgery, and so on. Instead, she focused on strengthening her core, practicing yoga, and taking Pilates.
“I was managing my life that way,” she says. “I missed out on so many things because my back would flare up.”
Rita put off back surgery for about a decade, postponing it even when her foot was numb and even though she knew “you can repair bones, not nerves,” she says. She finally relented after crumbling on the tennis court during a match. (“It was match point,” Rita says. “The pro was like, ‘Sorry, but you’ve got to forfeit.’”)
“I was tired,” she says. “The moral of the story is: Listen to your body. It’s going to tell you what it needs. I finally got the message.”
Rita had spinal fusion surgery in January 2017. One week later, she no longer needed pain medications. After 6 weeks, “I felt better than I had in years,” Rita says.
The event was so life-changing that Rita got involved with the National Spine Health Foundation, taking the top job in 2019.
“We don’t have years to not fully be in our lives,” she says. “Modern spinal healthcare is great. Get the right diagnosis. Get the right treatment. And go back to your life.”
It took a teacher years to get past the pain
When his sciatica pain was at its peak, Rafael Rodriguez, of Auburn, California, lived with “just nuts, ridiculous pain” 6 out of every 7 days, he says.
He was taking as many as 18 Motrin (ibuprofen) a day (which is not doctor-recommended — the daily maximum dose of ibuprofen ranges from 1,200 mg to 3,200 mg).
But even that wasn’t enough, dropping his pain level from a 9 or a 10 on a 10-point scale to a 7 at best.
“It was still terrible. But I was teaching, and I had kids looking up to me,” says Rafael, now 51, who was about 37 when the pain began. “It was affecting my ability to play with my kids, but I had to be that superhero for them.”
When the pain started, Rafael didn’t know it came from the compression of one or more of the nerves running from his lower back and into his legs. He’d first noticed it in his right hip, and for almost 3 years, that’s where healthcare professionals focused their efforts.
Rafael checked in with different doctors and physical therapists. He took ice baths and tried hot tubs. A chiropractor theorized that the pain was the result of having one leg that was slightly shorter than the other, so he began wearing a shoe insert. He tried stretching exercises and staying fit, training for triathlons.
He secured a transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) device, using it to send an electrical jolt close to the area the pain stemmed from. The feeling, he says, is similar to the one you’d receive “from a 9-volt battery when you touch your tongue to it.”
It numbed the area, but it did not eliminate the pain. In fact, the pain started spreading through his buttocks and down his leg to his foot. “I could not walk,” he says. “Every time I’d take a step, it was like an electric current running down my leg.”
A sports medicine doctor directed Rafael to a spine specialist who finally got to the root of the problem: Rafael had a herniated disc and spondylolisthesis, most likely caused by a fractured vertebra that had slipped over the one below it, putting pressure on the spinal nerves.
Rafael and his doctors decided surgery was his best option. In 2013, he had a discectomy to remove the damaged disc, then spinal fusion surgery that included inserting a titanium implant to stabilize his spine. Now 11 years after surgery, Rafael has no nerve damage or lingering pain, although he’ll sometimes feel an uncomfortable twitch in his back.
But he enjoys that, he says. “It reminds me of those old days,” he jokes. “Oh, remember the pain?”
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